


like a bird in a cage spreading its wings to fly

by eynn



Series: had a dream, you and me in the war of the end times [8]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Nobody Dies, Time Travel Fix-It, and the council has a slumber party to cope with them, in which more of palpatine's war crimes are revealed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27079057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: “The Republic,” Mace proclaims solemnly, “is a dumpster fire.”There is a general murmur of agreement.
Series: had a dream, you and me in the war of the end times [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713040
Comments: 52
Kudos: 810





	like a bird in a cage spreading its wings to fly

**Author's Note:**

> update: depa's troops now have a name, and i unconfused myself about the respective sizes of companies and battalions

The sky is filled with stars.

Nobody ever looks up. Especially not people who think that the building is nothing more than a barn to keep their extra livestock in.

There are no skylights in the barracks of the Coruscant Guard, and very few windows, but the ceiling in the cavernous, dusty, deserted rec room glows with all the colors of the galaxy.

Nobody ever looks up during inspections.

There is barely any furniture, and the furniture that is there is stuff taken from literal garbage heaps or made from scraps. The walls are bare duracrete; no paint or adornment is allowed. The floor is bare and cold beneath his sluggish fingers. The handmade rugs woven from shredded blacks they sat on were always hidden away the second anyone got up.

They only _had_ a rec room because they didn’t need a place to park that many speeders.

He stares up at the stars dancing in the sky, made with stolen paint and polish smuggled from brother to brother more carefully than food, and counts the breaths it takes to track his eyes from one star to the next.

It’s taking more and more as time passes.

There will be no paperwork on the march beyond, he hopes. Just the endless road from star to star.

That’s why he crawled here, leaving a trail of bloody handprints and knee tracks as it ran from his nose and ears and a thousand tiny cuts as he slipped along the tunnels from the Senate, shedding pieces of his broken armor on the way.

There will be no orders to stay still and silent on the march beyond, he hopes, and stubbornly keeps his heavy eyes open even as the stars begin to move and blur.

~

There is only so much bad news that even a Jedi Master can take before they decide that it’s a good idea to get staggeringly drunk and think about it some more.

Tomorrow, they’re going to start packing up the entire Temple, every single item and plant and holocron. In a few days, they’re going to kill a Sith, loot everything he owns, and leave Coruscant, probably never to return.

Tonight, they’re going to drink a lot of alcohol and do their best to not cuddle Depa’s Vheh Company, soon to be formed into a battalion, to death, however much they look like they need it. The poor things are scared, they can feel it, and trying so hard not to show it.

The portals Yoda had spoken of had blossomed into life right inside the Council room as soon as they decided they wanted to use them, and the Council members far away had made excuses and come home.

They said it was a little disorienting, and left an aftertaste like peppermint, but on the whole was not a bad way to travel hundreds if not thousands of lightyears in one step.

Tonight is the last time they’ll have for who knows how long to just be careless, and they pile cushions and blankets and pillows into the Council room until it’s overflowing and shove the chairs aside in an imitation of the blanket forts they all built at least once when they were initiates. Vheh Company, bewildered and uneasy, have taken over one side of the room and huddle together, slowly rotating so no one is trapped on the outside.

To be fair, looting everything Sidious owns hadn’t been part of the original plan, but someone had suggested it after they were all about five bottles in and it made a lot of sense. The reasons were thus; Sith artifacts were dangerous, even the normal books that were only about the ideology, and therefore should be in the hands of people who could protect themselves and others from them, and they could be really useful in defending themselves against attacks by other Sith, and also it would just feel really good to get one over on the slimy bastard who was trying to get them all killed and take his stuff as well.

Depa sits up against her pile of cushions and rests her chin in her hands, going over the plan again. She can see no more flaws in it now than she did before. “What about you?” she asks in a lull in the conversation. “What do you want to take?”

Grey startles where he has been dozing, his head on her lap, and blinks up at her with eyes wide with fear before relaxing. She pats his face a little clumsily, feeling bad that he can’t even look at her without flinching. “Do you want to seal – steal anything from him?”

He hesitates, but she can feel the words in his mouth.

“Go through the guard barracks,” he says finally, hesitant. “I don’t think they had time to take much. We might be able to find the places they hid the things that were theirs.”

“They hid their things? Like, what, pocket money and stuff?” Kit says, leaning over a little too far. His normally cheerful grin is lopsided.

Grey startles a little. “No, no, we don’t have any money sir,” he almost squeaks, and Depa can feel his pulse suddenly racing. “We don’t even pick it up. We don’t. I swear.”

“Shh,” she says, trying to comfort him. “Why not? Even we keep pocket money for, I don’t know, food and stuff.”

His eyes dart between her and Kit. “We don’t get paid?” he ventures slowly. “And we’re not supposed to steal or –”

“You don’t get fucking paid?” Mace says from her other side.

Teenage Depa would be absolutely mortified about getting nicely sloshed with her Master, Adult Depa reflects, but surprisingly Mace is actually a cool drinking buddy.

“No?” Grey says, sitting up now and shrinking away from them.

“Hey,” she says, hurt and worried. “It’s okay, Grey, I promise. We’re not mad at you, or at any of you,” she adds, seeing that they’ve drawn the attention of her entire battalion. “We just didn’t realize that you didn’t – the fuck do you mean you don’t get paid? I sign off on your pay orders every tenday.”

“We can’t be trusted with credits, sir. And we don’t need to buy anything anyway because all we need to survive is already provided for us. So those just go back into the Supreme High Commander’s funds and he gives us food and ammunition.”

There’s a long silence as a bunch of inebriated Jedi try to process this.

“That’s stupid,” Shaak says at last. “Yeah, we pool the vast majority of the credits we make, but we all have a bit of spending money allowed every month. What if you want, I don’t know, a new blanket, or a holonovel, or some candy or something?”

“Blankets from stores,” Grey says, staring at the floor. “Entertainment’s not allowed, it’s a distraction. Though I’ve heard that regulations for battalions away from Coruscant are different. They get a few things to keep them from fighting on long trips.”

“Hold _on_ ,” says Luminara, holding up a finger. “So, you get ‘paid’,” she makes air quotes around the word “by the Senate every tenday, and we sign off on it to prevent corruption or some banthashit, it was in the regs, but really that money goes right back to Palpatine? And it doesn’t show up again anywhere anyone’s noticed, and that’s a . . . a lot of money, even if you’re all getting paid a criminally low wage, and I should know, it’s like an eighth of Republic legal minimum, so either all that money from taxpayers is just being piled up somewhere in a private account, or it’s actually funding the karking Separatists.” She looks around despondently and takes another drink from the bottle she’s holding. “I managed the funds for our clan when we were in the creche, Quin can’t math if it isn’t geometry and Obi can’t budget reliably and I don’t want to talk about you, Kit.”

“We needed that stuffed tooka,” he argues, very intensely for something that happened decades before.

“We couldn’t afford to eat out for months! And it taught me the signs of someone trying to do shady things with bank accounts!”

“ _ANyway_ ,” Mace says loudly. “That’s really interesting and if you’re talking about Mx. Kitty, I found them shoved up a disused maintenance shaft a few years ago and they live in my quarters now, thank you very much, but I want to know what the Guard would have left behind that we should try to return to them.”

“You’ve got Mx. Kitty!” Kit cries with enthusiasm.

“Why the _hell_ did you want a three-meter tooka in the most hideous shade of purple I have literally ever seen?” Luminara cries. “It was a hundred credits! We could have _budgeted_!”

“What do you think the Guard would have left behind?” Depa asks more quietly, ignoring Kit and Luminara starting to wrestle. She shoves Kit away with a leg on his back before he can upset Grey and gazes worriedly into his eyes.

Grey shrugs uncomfortably as everyone else’s attention swings back to him and looks at his hands. They’re clasped tightly together around his knees. “Just. Stuff. I know they probably didn’t have time to take all their rugs or bottles of paint, and there’s got to be some of the good ration bars stored somewhere. Maybe a few spares for armor, bits of wire. Um.”

He darts a quick look at her. “AdatapadortwoandsomepainmedicineandsomecandiesIthinkand . . . theymadereallygoodjewelryfromthejunktheyfoundinthetrash,” he mumbles. “So there’s probably some pliers and little hammers that might be harder to replace.”

“What was that?” she asks. “I didn’t hear it all.”

“A few datapads,” he says as though each word hurts. “Some extra pain medicine. There’s a shop on one of the patrol routes that throws out expired food every day. The things a few of them use to make . . . like, hair ties and replacement lanyards for the dog tags. Some ink and needles.”

“Extra pain medicine, you mean the –” Mace starts.

“Just, when you’re hurt you make it out to be a bit worse than it is and miss a few doses so that if something happens and your squad’s used up it’s allotment for the quarter and someone gets hurt they don’t have to –” Grey flaps a hand in agitation and then curls up tighter. “Just the regulation stuff. We don’t – we get decommissioned for asking for anything stronger and they search the barracks all the time.”

They stare, even Kit and Luminara, who are tangled together on the floor after good-naturedly forgetting why they were wrestling and calling it a draw.

“The Republic,” Mace proclaims solemnly, “is a dumpster fire.”

There is a general murmur of agreement.

“An excellent point, young one,” Yoda says from his cushion throne. They all jump; he’d looked like he was asleep. “A dumpster fire, the Republic is. Away from it I will be glad to be. Smells very bad it does.”

“The worst,” Kit agrees, trying to nod sagely.

“But what shall we do about the innocent people?” Plo asks, staring despondently into the weird thing he’s drinking. A bit of it sloshed on the floor ages before and is still smoking. “We have to get away for our lives, but we leave behind a world full of corruption and suffering.”

They look at each other.

“Well, we can’t help anyone if we’re dead,” Depa says at last.

“Seconded,” Agen says from somewhere in a heap of blankets. “I don’t like being assassinated. It’s never taken, but it bloody well hurts.”

“We can make a trail of sorts,” Plo muses. “Rescue people.”

“Yeah,” Mace says. “We’re not abandoning people who need help. But right now the people – hold on, this is deep, guys – the people who need help . . .” he pauses dramatically “ are _us_. Self-care. Look at Skywalker. He’s doing self-care and now he’s got, a family or something, and he can swear in public. Obi-Wan’s got . . . actually, I feel kind of sorry for him having to be stuck with Skywalker. Oh well. He’s used to it. He’s got . . . naps. He can nap whenever he wants, and why? Because he told the Republic to shove it and just left. He’s an awesome Jedi.” Mace drains his bottle and sighs. “I admire him a lot, you know? Put up with a lot when he was a kid, more when he was a teenager, I mean, he raised Qui-Gon _and_ Skywalker and, like, wow. First he raised an adult as a teenager and then he raised a teenager as an adult. Fights like he’s possessed . . . he might be, actually . . . where was I? Oh yeah. We should all strive to be more like Obi-Wan Kenobi and practice self-care, stick it to the Republic, and not be afraid to hug our friends and take naps when we want them. And I’m your leader among equals so you have to do what I saw. Say.”

They burst into a round of mildly confused but enthusiastic applause. Depa can certainly agree with taking more naps and swearing in public.

“And remember, everyone, we have to be sober and functional in the morning so we don’t all die,” he adds, which is a bit of a mood killer.

Later, Depa settles back into her pillow nest, Mace snoring softly to her left, Grey curled up at her shoulder with his men right behind him, and watches the city smog and what she can see of the stars through the tall windows until her eyes close.

~

The stars blur.

They get brighter.

_“I’ll always find those of you who need me.”_

~

_“—akin, what hap –”_

_“—n’t know, I felt this weird tuggi –”_

_“If this is more weird Cho –"_

~

_“Get him in here now, he needs help.”_

~

_“—covered in the Dark Side –”_

_“—ious, has to be, so which one is he? I can’t find any identifica –”_

_“Does that matter right now? Help me sto –”_

~

_“I don’t know if you can hear me, vod, but I’m the medic for the 501st and you’re going into surgery. I have to knock you out now. It’s going to be fine, this isn’t decommissioning.”_

~

When he finally gets his eyes to open again, the sky is filled with stars.


End file.
